Thank you all for coming! There are about 160 people registered
for the symposium, which includes about 130 people registered per
day.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a paper! We received 37 papers
[UPDATE: I misspoke; the actual number is 33], of which we
accepted 13. Unfortunately, we could not accept the 2 of those
submissions that were functional pearls, or the 2 of those
submissions that were experience reports. I’m not sure what’s going
on or whether we should do anything about it.

We received 4 demo proposals, and accepted 3 of them. We
received 0 panel proposals, and accepted 3 of them. I mean, all the
panels were the results of direct soliciting. There were 2 panels
yesterday and 1 today. I don’t know if panels were a good idea;
more on that later.

Each paper received at least 3 reviews. Thanks to the 16 PC
members and 16 external reviewers who produced those thoughtful and
informative reviews on a very tight schedule. Please give them a
hand.

Here is a chart of the countries of authors of submitted papers
(at the top) and of accepted papers (at the bottom). You can see
the usual suspects to the left, and also to the right there were
authors from Chile, Denmark, Argentina, Austria, and China, but
only the papers from Denmark and China made it.

This year the symposium went to 2 days from 1 day, and the
panels are new, and the keynote is new. I have no idea what you
think of these format changes. I don’t even know many of you. So
please take this survey (just take the URL of the symposium and put
the word “survey” at the end) and let us know what you think!

Again, thanks to the program committee, especially to Norman
Ramsey for his sage advice.

Thanks also to the steering committee, especially to Jeremy and
Janis for their sage advice. Of course, this would not happen
without the local organizers, starting with Greg Morrisett, and the
workshop chairs, Patrik and Sam.

Thank you for coming, and thank you for caring so much about
Haskell that you even came to a PC chair report at 9am. Thank you
also for making the Haskell community such a welcoming place. Any
questions?

I want to talk about the pain and pleasure of the Haskell
community. The Haskell community is not such a welcoming place to a
significant number of people. Regarding this, let me recall
something Simon Peyton Jones said a long time ago. He was talking
about how to write papers and handle reviews, but I think his
advice applies just as well to personal interactions and the
difficult task of communication in general.

I want to remind ourselves, starting with myself, to be grateful
for criticism as well as praise. Because we are among
friends—friends who inspire us to do our better, to do our
best.

So I want to remember to interpret criticism as suggestions for
improvement. Let’s thank those friends warmly, because they have
given up their time. for us.

There are some specific ways in which the Haskell community has
not been welcoming. We have harmed people disproportionately—I
know; I have talked to them—due to how society is set up and
their gender. We have harmed people disproportionately due to how
society is set up and their race. Or their sexual orientation. Or
differences between their gender and assigned gender. Or maybe due
to the fact that not everyone grew up in their parents’ garage
hacking category theory at age 14.

So, if you see harm—if you feel unwelcome—you. are. not.
alone.

I showed you the country chart earlier. I didn’t show you the
gender chart or the race chart, because I can only do so many sad
things per day. There are horrible imbalances among the authors of
this symposium. I think there were like two women. Of course you
don’t have to write a paper to be a member of our community, but
this is a tip of an iceberg. And I’m sorry for the tip and I’m
sorry for the iceberg. I should have instituted double-blind
reviewing and I didn’t. I’m sorry for that.

So what should we do about it? What am I doing about it? I want
to tell you quickly about two things.

First, it’s high time we learned from those people who did not
find the Haskell community a welcoming place. If you were excluded,
or if you know someone who was, please share your stories. Of
course you don’t have any obligation to do anything, but out of the
goodness of your hearts, please be our teacher. Please contact me,
at ccshan@indiana.edu. I’m getting help from some cultural
anthropologists at Indiana University. If you know about
anthropology at Indiana, you’ll know that these are professionals
who really know how to learn from and respect your individual
experiences and perspectives. We’re going to conduct interviews and
anonymize them. Then, I’m not sure what we’ll do with the
interviews—maybe they’ll become a SIGPLAN Notices article, or a
theatrical play, or a shared resource if the interviewees are
willing. In any case, the goal is to strengthen our empathy for
each other, to understand our different perspectives on our shared
community, and to open conversations about this important
topic.

Second, as we have those conversations—indeed, whether we’re
having a technical conversation or a social conversation, and
whether it’s a communal discussion or a private one-on-one, let us:
Be friendly, and speak our minds with compassion. Let us be
charitable, and listen to others with compassion. Let us support
one another, whether by speaking up or stepping back. And let us
not burn out, and take care of ourselves, because this is hard,
worthwhile, work. Just like it’s worthwhile to hack GHC or to write
a clear paper or to give a sincere talk or to ask a helpful
question or to write a respectful message on haskell-cafe or to
glue together PHP and shell scripts to hold up our community
infrastructure. None of us signed up for this work when we were
born—I didn’t sign up for my native language to be the one not
made fun of at my elementary school—so thank you for doing
it.

Thanks to three amazing women—Ava DuVernay, Lindsey Kuper, and
MrsB—for inspiring me to talk about this, and thanks to the
SIGPLAN executive committee for their support.